


don't go (where I can't follow)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode: s03e05 4722 Hours, F/M, Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 21:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9024953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: There’s no Hive. No Will. No sun. Just sand and silence … and Ward.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shineyma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/gifts).



> A Christmas gift for the bestest Amy in the whole world. I hope your Christmas is wonderful, sweetie.
> 
> As for the rest of you, all of the italics sections are flashbacks. That should make it easier to understand all that's happening.

It’s absurd. Absolutely ridiculous. For ten months Jemma’s slept on sand and stone and very thin bedrolls, but now that she’s in a real bed with pillows and blankets and ergonomic foam, she can’t sleep a wink.

Fitz is sleeping. He’s propped up in his chair by her bedside, snoring lightly.

He’s _here_. She lets that fact sink into her bones for a moment, simply enjoying the reality that she is no longer alone, no longer on a planet where she could count the intelligent life forms on one hand with fingers to spare.

But sleep is still frustratingly out of her reach and it’s only that single moment before she’s slipping out of bed. She’s not under quarantine, Bobbi reassured her, merely observation and it seems despite her long absence, her security has not been revoked. She has no trouble at all accessing the panel beside the pod’s door or prompting it to release her.

She’s a bit disoriented after that. The pods - and there are several - are a new addition to the Playground and her memories of being transferred to one are too murky to give her any idea where she is. The lift at the end of the hall, however, is infinitely useful. It tells her she’s on the third basement level and provides her transport to the ground floor.

Up here, she breathes a little easier. She knows this part of the base. There are changes - it seems the lab’s had new windows installed as well as an upgrade to its equipment, but she barely cares about that, she’s too busy ducking down a dark hall in search of a familiar, vibranium-reinforced door.

She meets no one along the way, which is convenient as she’d have trouble explaining why she’s padding around the base barefoot and in ill-fitting sweats. (They were always rather big on her, perfect for curling up in bed or on the couch for movie night, but she’s lost so much weight in the last year that she’s practically swimming in them.)

She has no trouble with the locks here either and slips quietly through the door and down the single flight of stairs beyond. The cold concrete bites at her toes, but she moves too swiftly to care, heading straight for the tablet controlling the opaque barrier that bisects the room. A single tap sees it falling away and she realizes she wasn’t entirely silent. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, shadows under his eyes making them look hollow, but his whole body relaxes when he sees her.

“Jemma,” he breathes.

She crosses over the line on the floor without a moment’s hesitation. He rises up to meet her and she should probably worry that his solid arms wrapping around her feel more like home than anything else has since their return, but with her subconscious satisfied, there’s nothing else to ward off sleep and she finds herself drifting off before she can truly think about what she’s done.

 

 

 

_She stopped griping at him two hours ago. Before that it was two and a half solid days of her pissing and moaning over every little thing. Blaming him for their being stuck here because, by whatever crazy logic she’s using, if he hadn’t been HYDRA they never would’ve been down in that city and this never would’ve happened. Accusing him of plotting to leave her behind. Overemotional rants about him refusing medical attention back in their Bus days. She hit everything._

_But now she’s stopped, gone so quiet he’d worry she fell behind miles ago except he can still hear her breathing. She’s flagging, they both are, and if they don’t find water soon…_

_“Come on.” He reaches back for her as they near the base of a hill. She swats his hand away with more force than he was expecting and he grins over his shoulder at her. She looks like shit - sunken eyes, chapped lips, and the damn blue light covering every inch of this wasteland isn’t helping. “Ladies first,” he says with all the cheek he can muster._

_She huffs out an especially heavy breath and passes him by. “The white armor doesn’t suit you.”_

_He keeps on grinning as she starts pulling herself up, soft fingers digging into the sharp rocks. “I’m only thinking of the view,” he teases._

_She makes to kick him but it’s weak either because she is or because she doesn’t really mean it. He starts climbing behind her, close enough to support her if she loses her grip._

_She’s wrong. This isn’t his fault. It’s fucking Whitehall’s. The son of a bitch knew what he was doing dropping them both into that creepy ass room, Grant’s sure of it. Well it’s not gonna work. They’re gonna stay alive out here, find their way back home, and if he’s still feeling chivalrous when they get there, he’ll offer to let Simmons cut Whitehall up a little before he puts a bullet in the bastard’s brain. Fucking Nazi psychopath._

_“Ward,” Simmons says, sounding strangled. For a second, he’s afraid she’s come across some dangerous looking animal, but she’s reached the top of the hill and her eyes are fixed straight ahead. He scrambles up alongside her, hope leaping into his throat-_

_-only to drop the second he sees what’s got her so scared. There’s a wall of sand heading their way._

_“Come on,” he says, grabbing onto the back of her jeans and heaving her over the crest of the hill. She cries out as her back slides along the stones but he follows a second later, catching her and holding them both still against the embankment. He strips off his belt with fingers made clumsy by dehydration and catches her wrist, forcing her to hold his in return before he wraps the belt around their hands. “Whatever you do,” he warns, “don’t let go and try to breathe shallow.”_

_He tears the last remains of her hazmat suit from around her waist and rips it in half with his fingers and his teeth just in time for the first winds to reach them. He doesn’t know if he gets her head covered well enough, but he knows her hand stays tight around his wrist; that’s what matters._

 

 

 

The barrier snapping back to life wakes her hours later. She doesn’t know it’s that though, not at first. All she knows is there’s something in here with them and she comes up with her stake in her hand.

Coulson stands beside the chair, wearing the same haggard look Jemma grew all too familiar with in the weeks after the uprising. She has a rather impressive imagination and could all too easily stir up what thoughts might have put that expression back on his face. She doesn’t.

Grant’s fingers move on her hip, curling and uncurling almost idly. But she knows Grant does nothing idly, nothing without thought and reason. She frowns down at him, still laying behind her. He must have heard Coulson coming and thus been unsurprised by the return of the barrier.

The pressure at her hip increases, a faint push to spur her out of bed. She doesn’t know why until she looks to Coulson again and sees he’s opened a path through the barrier, just wide and tall enough for her to slip through.

Grant gives her a nod, a tiny encouragement that it’s all right. She touches his cheek before standing, the brief feel of his skin beneath hers to last her … she doesn’t know how long. She refuses to think about the hows and whys of her seeing him again the same way she refuses to think about what Coulson might be thinking of her.

The barrier opaques the second she’s through and, with Grant out of sight, some of Coulson’s rage drops off. His eyes soften and his shoulders droop. “Come on,” he says gently and lets her precede him up the stairs. She feels his hand hovering at her back, ready to catch her should she stumble, the whole way.

They don’t go far. Only to the observation room above Vault D. It’s not as comfortable as his office would be, but there are chairs and a steady view of Grant falling into his morning routine below them. She can’t help a smile as he does so.

She’s grown familiar with it - more than she was from her morning checks of him after the uprising - in the last few months. He would even sometimes tease her as he worked out, plainly showing off his physique to its best advantage, knowing she watched, daring her to do something about it.

Quite often she did.

The warm, rich smell of her favorite blend reaches her. It is perhaps the only sensation on Earth that could have arrested her attention so completely away from Grant at the moment and, if Coulson’s smile as he holds out the cup is any indication, he was hoping it would have such an impact.

“Hunter made it,” he says, “so you don’t need to worry.”

The old joke, her insistence on the Bus that no American was capable of properly brewing tea, has her smiling in return. But she does wonder, as she takes a sip (a lovely, perfect sip), when Hunter made it. It certainly wasn’t here when she and Coulson walked in. How long has she been watching Grant?

Coulson sees her concern and sets his own mug aside, untouched. “Just start at the beginning,” he says, voice more gentle than she’s ever heard it, “take your time.”

 

 

 

_“It’s rude, is what it is, putting that kind of legacy on some poor alien.”_

_“Some poor alien we’re eating,” he reminds her, waving the tentacle he’s got drying on the rock next to him at her. It’s the third tentacle he’s taken off the thing and he’s starting to worry about whether it might be lulling him into a false sense of security._

_“Still,” she says, like it’s a valid argument._

_They’re talking, as they do most of the time, about the lake. She wants to name it after some scientist and he wants to name it Lake Hydra, on account of its sole occupant being a tentacle monster, and they get into long arguments about who saw it first after the storm passed by and whose choice of name is better. Far as killing time goes, there are worse ways, and it’s nice seeing her rolling her eyes instead of glaring at him all the time._

_“What’s that?” she asks, leaving off stoking her fire to stare at the not-bamboo (she gets pissy when he calls it bamboo) growing past the lake._

_He shrugs, not seeing anything. “Wind?” It likes to blow through the not-bamboo, making spooky noises when he’s trying to sleep._

_Simmons heads off around the lake and he curses under his breath. What does she think she’s doing investigating weird noises out here? That’s how people die._

_He’s on his feet, all set to follow and give her a lecture on just that subject, when she drops out of his view. Literally drops, taking his heart with her. He doesn’t remember sprinting around the lake or skidding to his knees at the edge of the hole that’s opened up. Next thing he knows for sure, he’s staring at her limp body twenty feet down in some dark cave and he_ can’t breathe _._

_His whole world narrows to reaching her. He forgets the fire, the food waiting to be eaten, the danger of walking into a dark cave with no idea what could be living there. None if it is as important as reaching her._

 

 

 

She runs into May - very nearly literally, it’s likely only the other woman’s quick reflexes that prevent a collision - on her way to the shower. While May’s grip on her shoulder loosens, Jemma’s grip on her towel only tightens. She holds it to her chest like a shield, fearful of the censure she’s sure to face.

May’s fingers run lightly down the sleeve of her robe and then fall away entirely. Jemma’s never been able to read her, so she doesn’t try now, only keeps her eyes on their feet and prays this moment will pass quickly.

“Did he hurt you?” 

Jemma looks up sharply. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised by the question. If she were anyone else, if she had been on Earth all this time and some other poor woman had been stranded alone with Ward on a desert planet, she would be wondering precisely the same thing.

She shakes her head, unable to find words to put May’s mind at ease. May nods to herself, taking far more from the simple gesture than Jemma put into it, and moves to pass her by.

Unlike Coulson, Jemma cannot, even if she wanted to, imagine what May is thinking. Uncertainty breeds fear and she finds herself turning before May can disappear around the corner. “He saved me,” she says, stopping May in her tracks. “I wouldn’t- If he hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t-” She remembers the persistent hollow in her stomach, the endless twilight, the surety that she would never again see her friends or her family or even a bloody flower. Ward was there through all of it, daring her to live when she would have died simply to escape the emptiness stretching out ahead of her.

May turns just far enough that Jemma can see the sharp edge of her smile. “He said the same thing about you.”

 

 

 

_“What he hell were you thinking?” he demands, all his plans to keep his temper in check forgotten the second she climbs down. They’re in the caves, the ones he found after he was sure she’d only been knocked out by the fall. Kind of NASA to leave supplies, but also kind of terrifying. They’re not the first humans who’ve been here, not by a long shot._

_She pauses, one foot still on the last rung of the ladder. “I was thinking that I don’t need your permission to go outside.”_

_“You weren’t just outside,” he says, well aware he’s crowding her back against the wall but unable to stop himself. “You were_ gone _. I couldn’t find you anywhere.”_

_Her eyes are big and wide. He’s never seen her so scared, not when she was dying from the Chitauri virus, not when he was yelling at her after the berserker staff, not when he dropped her to the bottom of the ocean. But she still manages a somewhat steady, “I was gathering data for the calculations. I needed a better vantage point to see the stars.”_

_He should move away. He should give her space to breathe and stop scaring her. But she’s here and alive and not- not gone. He fists his hand just short of grabbing her arm. “You were gone,” he says again, without meaning to._

_The fear in her eyes shifts, becomes something probing and dangerous. He should really back away now but she’s really looking at him and he can’t stop that, not for anything._

_Her fingers brush his cheek and he’s gotta close his eyes against the feel of them on his beard. She moves - not away,_ towards _him - and her whole body’s pressing up against his and her lips are on his mouth and there is nothing, not on this world or any other, that’s ever felt so damn good._

 

 

 

It’s been ten months, it’s only natural things would change in that time. Still, the revelation that Bobbi and Mack were spying on them in service of some shadowy Council is a bit much.

“Coulson got ‘em under control,” Hunter says at the same moment he lets the tennis ball slip from his fingers. It sails across the lounge and she catches it neatly in her lap. “Or they got him under control. Isn’t a compromise unless everybody’s a little unhappy, right?” From his expression - and the fact she hasn’t seen him in the same room as Bobbi for more than five seconds together - she imagines he’s more than a _little_ unhappy.

“I suppose I’m not making matters easier.” She tosses the ball back. It’s training, he says, to get her body used to Earth’s gravity again. She thinks it more likely he just wanted to see her, reassure himself she’s still here and whole, and this was a good way to keep her in one place for a while. But it’s better than staring dumbly at the walls of her room, wondering what the others are thinking of her now that they know…

“Hey.” Hunter snatches the ball out of the air and crosses the lounge so he’s right in front of her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was just the two of you, all alone, he had plenty of chances to get in your head.” He touches her shoulder. “No one’s blaming you-” When he says “no one” she gets the distinct impression he’s talking about someone and she can easily guess who it is.

“I love him.”

Hunter’s mouth snaps shut and Jemma’s not quite sure how to follow up that revelation herself, so she simply stands and goes.

 

 

 

_It fails. All her calculations. All her planning. It all leads to nothing when the portal is on the other side of a hundred foot drop. They watch it open, watch it close, and then they turn to go … home._

_It’s a two week hike spent in mostly silence. Even when they stop for the night and she pulls at his clothes, it’s quiet. She never says a word and he starts winding her up as much as he can, taking her needy moans and pants when he can’t have her words._

_She’s slipping away. He can see it. This, losing all hope of reaching Earth, is gonna eat away at her, leave her thinner and frailer day by day until one day there’s nothing left._

_And when she goes it’ll only be a matter of time. He needs her. He-_

A weakness _, John’s voice warns in his head. But the warning comes too late - way the hell too late. He’s already let her in deeper than Skye ever was. He’s well and truly fucked and if she dies, it’ll kill him. Simple as that._

_They’re two days from the caves when he spends half the night on her, touching her and kissing her and teasing her until she’s so damn gone on him she doesn’t even know what planet she’s on. He doesn’t let her sleep until he knows she can’t take anymore and she’ll be out for hours; he doesn’t want her waking up and finding him gone._

_He runs half the way there and most of the way back, but when Jemma wakes up he’s right by her side, holding the necklace she left back where that first portal dumped them. She cries and yells, gets mad, gets angry. He lets her, lets her hit him even when she tells him he should’ve left it there, how will Fitz find her without it to mark the way. But in the end, she clings to him and thanks him and lets him put the necklace on her._

_This is it. This is all there is for them anymore._

_He’ll make sure it’s enough._

 

 

 

“Gonzales revoked your access, huh?” Sk- Daisy isn’t looking at Jemma, she’s looking at the heavy door behind her.

“Yes,” Jemma says. She doesn’t bother to say the rest: that she sees no way to sleep without him, that she can’t bear the thought of returning to her room only to be more lonely than she ever was in that desert. It should all be rather obvious given that she’s sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest like a child who hopes if only she holds her breath long enough, she’ll be given what she wants. She’s pathetic.

“You know,” Daisy says carefully, “if it was just sex or Stockholm or-”

“It wasn’t.” Jemma drags in a breath. “I know you must hate me after everything he’s done and I know it doesn’t make any sense to you but … but he was all I had.” She rests her temple against the door to be that much closer to him.

The silence drags out and, though she knows it doesn’t, she wishes it means Daisy has left her to wallow in her own pathetic heartache. Finally, it’s broken by the electronic chime of the lock disengaging.

Daisy steps back, pocketing her ID. “Nobody hates you. Fitz is a little hurt, yeah, and Hunter and Mack are taking his side because of testosterone or whatever, but they’ll get over it. And,” she adds heavily, “Coulson’s working on convincing the Council to let Ward out with one of those bracelet things, so hopefully you won’t have to sleep in that cold cell much longer.”

Jemma stands slowly, staring at the door rather than touching it for fear it will suddenly lock again.

Daisy gestures helplessly. “Will you just go sleep with your stupid boyfriend before those words reach my brain and I have to throw up from the mental image?”

Jemma throws herself at her in a tight hug that is immediately returned. “Thank you,” she says into Daisy’s hair.

“We will never speak of this again,” Daisy says, pushing her gently towards the door. “Now hurry up before someone sees.”

 

 

 

_Goddamn Fitz found a way. Grant’d laugh if he wasn’t too busy running. It’s not just the trouble of reaching the portal, it’s the storm rearing up at the edge of his vision._

_His hand catches Jemma’s a second before the first wave of sand hits them. He’s gotta be hurting her, leaving bruises that’ll last for days, but he won’t lose her, not when they’re so close._

_“We can make it!” she yells, tugging him deeper into it._

_He can hear Fitz now, yelling her name, and spares half a thought to be grateful it’s not HYDRA coming to finish them off. But it’s only half a thought because the wind’s too strong and something’s pulling Jemma out of his grasp and he can’t- he’s slipping-_

_Her hand tightens around his wrist and this time it’s him who’s sure to be bruising. “Whatever you do,” she yells over the wind, “don’t let go!”_

_He couldn’t if he wanted to._

 

 

 

Jemma wakes up safe and secure in Grant’s arms, with his promises in her ear that he’ll do whatever it takes to stay close, it won’t be like this - a cell beneath the ground - forever. She bites her tongue to hold back what she’s thinking: a cell beneath the ground isn’t so different from underground caves. She can be happy with this, so long as he’s with her. This is all the home she needs.

 

 


End file.
